EXCLUSIVE: Deadline can now confirm the cast for this long gestating, highly anticipated action thriller that will be the first of an anticipated franchise trilogy. It resurrects the popular Tom Clancy character of CIA analyst Jack Ryan last seen on film in 2002 and now played by Chris Pine in the role already made famous by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck. After various starts and stops, bad luck and good fortune, Deadline also has learned that Jack Ryan finally has come together for a release in the 4th quarter of 2013.

Paramount chose to wait for Pine to complete the second installment of Star Trek in this contemporized original prequel story that picks up Ryan before he joined the CIA. (Paramount long ago locked in Pine after he played Captain Kirk.) His love interest and the female lead is Keira Knightley. Paramount was intensely searching because it’s a high profile role — an older version of the character was played by Anne Archer in the Harrison Ford films — and involves options that would potentially put the actress in three pictures.

As Deadline previously reported, Kevin Costner has an invented but key role as does the film’s director Kenneth Branagh who will play the Russian villain plotting to wreck the U.S. economy. Paramount began talks with the Thor helmer to replace the once-attached Jack Bender. Paramount courted Costner to become a linchpin in not only Jack Ryan but also the spinoff franchise Without Remorse based on Clancy’s 1993 novel. (The studio is now courting The Dark Knight Rises villain Tom Hardy to star, with Christopher McQuarrie rewriting to direct.) The deal that came together envisions Costner potentially headlining his own film as William Harper, a true blue American idealist who recruits and mentors both Ryan and John Kelly from Without Remorse. Kelly later becomes CIA operative Clark.

Paramount like every studio is looking to build tentpoles and has a good opportunity for more than one here by cross-pollinating characters Ryan and Clark like The Avengers successfully keeps doing.

Branagh recently described the movie as “an original story that allows us to understand how Jack Ryan develops into a CIA analyst, before joining, and perhaps even joining, the CIA. It’s a very contemporary action thriller set in the here and now.” its launching point is mentioned in Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October book and film: a terrifying helicopter crash that nearly killed Ryan when he was a 23-year-old Marines platoon leader and the only member to survive.

Paramount Pictures and co-financier Skydance Productions went top shelf to get the franchise relaunch to the starting line and hired David Koepp for 7-figures to redraft the script by Adam Cozad known as Moscow. Cozad was a screenwriter without a screen credit and yet now is in the middle of some of the bigger projects in town. Screenwriter Hossein Amini first wrote a totally different version that was being developed simultaneously with Cozad’s Dubai. The genesis of this Jack Ryan story started as Dubai, which Cozad then turned into Moscow which was bought by Paramount and then turned into this Jack Ryan. Then Anthony Peckham did a pass. Then Cozad was put back on, then Koepp was brought in. Koepp, whose franchise work includes Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man and Jurassic Park, couldn’t get started until he’d finished Premium Rush, the film he co-wrote and directed.

Certainly an acceptable version of Jack Ryan could have been put into production this year, but the priority was more about launching a new franchise then filling a release slot. The studio’s desire to get the screenplay right prompted Paramount to even shuffle the start dates of Jack Ryan with Pine’s other studio franchise, Star Trek 2. That move was prompted by the exit of Steve Zaillian, who scripted the 1994 Ryan film Clear And Present Danger and did uncredited rewrite work on Patriot Games. Zaillian made a deal to rewrite the reboot script but had a change of heart and withdrew before starting.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mace Neufeld are producing for Paramount and David Ellison’s Skydance Productions is cofinancing the entire Jack Ryan series under its overall Paramount deal. Ellison will also be involved in a producing capacity. Skydance is also partnered with Paramount on Without Remorse.

The Jack Ryan franchise has been dormant since 2002′s The Sum Of All Fears, with Ben Affleck playing a young Ryan in a film that didn’t live up to its predecessors despite a $193M worldwide gross. The franchise was originally launched with Alec Baldwin in the lead role in The Hunt For Red October, which grossed $200M worldwide in 1990. Harrison Ford took over the character for 1992′s Patriot Games, which grossed $178M worldwide, and 1994′s Clear And Present Danger, which grossed $215M worldwide.

24 Comments

Sean • on Aug 22, 2012 7:44 pm

Wow, did not know the Ben Affleck film did as well as it did. Was always under the impression it totally failed. With that in mind: don’t understand the logic of leaving the series dormant for ten years.

Not feeling Knightley’s casting in this role. None of her recent films have done anything — in fact, she herself hasn’t been interesting on-screen in a while. Would have liked to have seen one of the other candidates like Evangeline Lilly instead get a chance to bring something fresh here.

David Lean Fan • on Aug 23, 2012 12:21 am

And what “interesting” work has Evangeline Lilly done on-screen?

FTCS • on Aug 22, 2012 8:33 pm

Always liked Alec Baldwin best as Jack Ryan and Chris Pine is a great choice to reboot this character and franchise along with the solid cast and Kenneth in the director’s chair.

Admiral James Greer • on Aug 22, 2012 8:51 pm

Baldwin was the best Ryan and Red October was the best movie. Affleck was also really good and they should have continued the series with Ben as Ryan.

Ford was the worst but he was stuck doing two of the lesser stories they were too pedestrian the stakes weren’t high enough like they were in Red October and Sum of All Fears.

Cue Tom Clancy in 3-2-1 he’ll start complaining again like he always does he hates everything they ever do with Ryan. Nothing is ever good enough for Clancy. He won’t like Pine and he won’t like the story even though it’s based on the Ryan history Clancy created.

Since it’s a prequel we won’t get to see James Earl Jones as Admiral Greer he was so good in that part I’ll miss him. And for the record, I was never here and this post never happened.

He complains because they completely bastardize the characters and his storylines but this his own fault for giving Paramount the rights with no strings attached to begin with. But, please, don’t act is if Paramount has ever done a good job with this franchise outside of The Hunt for Red October.

IMHO, they should let the Ryan franchise fade away. The Cold War theme is quite dated and more importantly, this isn’t even an adaptation of a Clancy story. It’s just a complete contrivance with Clancy’s name and character names attached to it. It’s like all of those little 250 page novels that Clancy didn’t write like Tom Clancy’s Op Center. This is Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan… even though Tom Clancy has nothing to do with the film or the character other than the name and the fact that the Clancy name on the banner is still worth something.

And not for nothing, but are you freaking kidding? Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger are both fantastic novels. They’re only pedestrian because Paramount made them that way. Talk about pedestrian… the watered-down, politically correct film adaptation of The Sum of All Fears bears no resemblance to the controversial novel at all. It should never have been made but I will say that the (at the time)milquetoast Affleck was the perfect actor for such a pathetic film.

Methinks that you didn’t read the books.

mr. ngoc • on Aug 22, 2012 9:05 pm

curious to see Keira Knightley.

cj • on Aug 22, 2012 9:12 pm

Great cast. Been missing Costner.

The Kevster • on Aug 22, 2012 10:06 pm

First off, how can anyone keep track of all these writers and drafts. Second, how can a decent script emerge with all these fingerprints on it?

Third, sorry, Kenneth Branagh is not a good director and hasn’t been for a long time. ‘Thor’ alone does not make up for all of the terrible films he directed that preceded it and knocked him out of directing studio films for years. See: ‘Frankenstein,’ etc.

Fourth: Philip Noyce’s ‘Clear and Present Danger’ was far and away the best of the bunch, regardless of who one’s favorite Ryan is, which is why it was also the highest grossing.

Lastly: all of you fellow Ryan buffs correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t their also an almost-fatal helicopter crash in the Affleck re-boot? But that is clearly not the same one Clancy referred to in ‘Red October.’

4. Uh… no Clear and Present Danger as a film is a complete piece of shit. Fantastic novel, horrible film. It’s domestic numbers are identical to The Hunt for Red October and it only made $15 million more internationally and that’s because it was an August 4th Summer release as opposed to Red October‘s March 2, 1990 release. Clear and Present Danger was also shown in 600 more theaters, as well.

The numbers are virtually identical and if you want get really snarky about it, Clear and Present Danger cost $32 million more to produce than Red October so by my math, using the simplest standards, Red October actually cleared $17 million more than Clear and Present Danger.

And there isn’t a soul on the planet besides yourself that thinks that the film adaptation of Clear and Present Danger is better than Red October, so you’ll have to enjoy that island by yourself.

5. As far as the Affleck reboot is concerned, it’s such a forgettable abortion of a film that it’s doubtful that any Clancy fans really care to nitpick over something as minor as that. The entire premise and all of the characters are completely changed and you think people are worried about the helicopter crash?

Originality • on Aug 22, 2012 10:20 pm

Why is it a trilogy? And why are they already planning a spinoff? And a spinoff of that spinoff? This a Tom Clancy adaptation not lord of the rings. Let’s have a look at the first one and decide if we want to see more. Cool? And don’t end with a bunch of dangling threads (Prometheus, bourne). That’s fine if you’re a tv show coming back within 3-6 months but annoying if you’re that doesn’t necessarily warrant a franchise to begin with (and yes I know clancy wrote a gazillion jack Ryan books – but they were all stand alone stories not trilogies with over arching mythologies).

Standard contracts for franchise films like this are always three films. Whether or not the sequels get made is entirely up to the studio based on the commercial success of each film.

Verify Our Distance To Target • on Aug 22, 2012 10:25 pm

One Ping Only Please…

Always makes me nervous for a film when I read that the script started as one thing, then became an other, and finally was turned into the project that is getting made. I’m not going to hold my breath on this one. Should be good, but I’m not expecting great.

They should make four films at once they have at least that many versions of the script. Forget the trilogy do a quadrilogy. Dare to be different. Just continue filming for one year nonstop and you will have four movies instead of just one. The same way they will soon have two complete different movies of World War Z.

steve • on Aug 23, 2012 4:26 am

Actually they are interconnected. Ryan career progressed through the books and his family grew. There is a definite linear timeline. Ryan became president of the united states and his son who was born between patriot games. And clear and present danger is now working for the CIA.

Marty McKirk • on Aug 23, 2012 8:36 am

Heard the story – Jack actually changes the events in the past which causes the whole Red October thingy to never happen. Crazy.

Hey, I love Jack Bauer, too, but screw that. It’s the Mitch Rapp novels by Vince Flynn that need to be in theaters like yesterday. There have been so many problems trying to make that a reality.

Charles • on Sep 15, 2012 12:45 am

It failed in that they rewrote a great story to fit an actor too young to play the part in Affleck. At least this time they are taking a young actor to the earlier story arc, hopefully their new rewrite is better.